HISTORY AND ANTHOLOGY OF LITERATURE 美国文学史及选读 American Literature 美国文学史及选读

HISTORY AND ANTHOLOGY OF LITERATURE

美国文学史及选读

American Literature

美国文学史及选读

College of Foreign Languages, CTGUCollege of Foreign Languages, CTGU

HISTORY AND ANTHOLOGY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE

The Literature of Realism & Walt Whitman

Life of WhitmanMain WorksLeaves of Grass(1855)Song of MyselfHis PositionDifference between Whitman and Dickinson



Life and Achievement(1)

1) Walt Whitman owes his considerable fame in America literary history to a single volume of poetry,Leave of Grass, which he first published in 1855(containing 12 poems)and he paid for the books’ publication.In the final , deathbed edition of Leaves of Grass (1891),there were 383 titled poems.



Life and Achievement(2)

2) Walt Whitman was born on Long Island,New York. After he left school at eleven, he became,in turn, an office boy, a doctor’s helper, a typesetter ,a journalist, a printer, an editor, and even once he taught in country school.He was influenced by the Transcendentalists. His poetry extends the Transcendentalists’ joy in nature to a love for humanity. (born of working-class background;little schooling; reading widely;tried at a variety of jobs; wrote 400-odd poems)



Free Verse

Free verse is a poetry that has an irregular rhythm and line length and that attempts to avoid any predetermined verse structure. Instead, it uses the natural speech.Whitman’s poetry is an example of free verse at its most impressive. It was Whitman who pioneered the form and made it acceptable in American poetry.



His Works

Leaves of Grass 《草叶集 — 》 nine editions

Drum Taps (1865) 《桴鼓集》 — about civil war

Two Rivulets (1876) 《两条小河》 --dedication to 100th anniversary of US

Democratic Vistas (1870) 《民主的前景》 --collection of prose

“Song of Myself” & “I Hear America Singing”

“O, Captain! My Captain!” & “I Sit and Look Out”



Study Questions on “Song of Myself”

1.According to line 1 of section one, who is the poet celebrating?2.What facts about himself does Whitman reveal in lines 6-9 of section one?3.Describe the relationship Whitman set up with the readers in the first section.



The Theme of The Leaves of Grass

The poet combined the ideal of the democratic common man and that of the rugged individual. He envisioned the poet as a hero, a savior and a prophet, one who leads the community by its expression of the truth. The central image is a leaf of grass, which symbolizes the vitality of life and growth.

Whitman extols the ideals of equality and democracy and celebrates the dignity, the

self-reliant spirit and the joy of the common man.



Style and Language

Whitman was a daring experimentalist.a. The use of the poetic "I". Speaking in the voice of "I",

Whitman becomes all those people in his poems, and yet remains "Walt Whitman", hence a discovery of the self in the other with such identification.

b. The use of free verse. Whitman broke free from the traditional iambic pentameter and wrote free verse. Free verse is poetry without a fixed beat or regular rhyme scheme. A looser and more open-ended syntactical structure is frequently favored.

c. The use of parallelism and phonetic recurrence.d. The use of colorful words and vivid images.



Questions on “Beat! Beat!Drums”

1.What people do the drums and bugles disturb in each of the stanzas 1,2,and 3?

2.What verbs and adjectives are used to describe the sound of the drums and bugles?

3.Base on the description of the drums and bugles , what do they seem to represent?

4. What does the simile in line2 imply? 5.Are the people in stanzas 1 and 2 doing

anything out of the ordinary? 6.Why might the people in stanza3 be

praying?



O Captain! My Captain!

O CAPTAIN! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;

The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won;

The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,

While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:

But O heart! heart! heart! O the bleeding drops of red, Where on the deck my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead.



O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;

Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills; 10

For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding;

For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;

Here Captain! dear father! This arm beneath your head; It is some dream that on the deck, 15 You’ve fallen cold and dead.



My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;

My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;

The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;

From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won; 20

Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells! But I, with mournful tread, Walk the deck my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead.



His Position

1) Whitman’s great contribution to American literature is his use of free verse. His poetry added to the literary independence of the new nation by breaking free of the convention of the iambic pentameter and exhibiting a freedom unknown before.

2) Not only the form of Whitman’s free verse but also his thought of democracy have been influential in world literature, and remain the inspiring source of 20th-century literature.

4) Whitman’s influence over modern poetry is great in the world as well as in America. His best work has become part of the common

property of western culture. Many later poets are on his debts.



Differences between Whitman and Dickinson

1) Whitman keeps his eyes on society at large;

Dickinson explores the inner life of individual.

2) Whitman is “national” in his outlook; Dickinson is “regional”. 3) Whitman’s poetry is in form of endless, all- inclusive catalogs; Dickinson’s poetry is in form of concise, direct, and simple diction and syntax.



Emily Dickinson



Emily Dickinson

Her Life Her achievements Her view and theme Her style Comments on her



Views & theme

achievements

Her life

Writing feature

outline



Life of Emily Dickinson

Life 1. In 1830 Emily Dickinson was born in Calvinist

family; and she was influence by her father. Her birth place was Amherst, Massachusetts, where her father was a prominent lawyer and politician. Emily Dickinson left Amherst only five or six times. She died in the house where she was born. She was called a total recluse.

2. Only seven of Emily Dickinson’s poems were published during her lifetime, and even those were published anonymously.

3. After her death, her sister found nearly 1800 poems that she had written.



Her Life (2)

4 Settled down to a normal New England village life; Emily Dickinson was shy, sensitive, and sometimes rebellious; She studied at Amherst Academy and Mount Holyoke Female Seminary; refused to observe its religious customs.

5 stayed almost all her life in the same house; 6 remained single to the end of her life; 7 her 2 passions were her garden and her poetry; 8 began writing poetry during her twenties; 9 1775 poems altogether, of which only 7 appeared in

print.



Achievements

She was influenced by the Bible, classical myths, Shakespeare, the English Romantic poet John Keats and R.W.Emerson.

The poems are short, many of them being based on a single image or symbol.

Her subject are the greatest ones---soul, death , life , nature, God, love and her special talent is to express her thought from everyday experience.

Emily Dickinson was known as American’s most original and important woman poet.



Her view and theme

1) Her poetry is a clear illustration of her religious- ethical and political-social ideas;

2) Her basic tone was tragic; 3) Her themes concern death and immortality; 4) She sees nature as both gaily benevolent

and cruel. 5) She emphasizes free will and human responsibility. 6) She holds that beauty, truth and goodness

are ultimately one.



Study Questions on Because I could not stop for Death

1.What might the three things the speaker pass in stanza 3 represent?

2. Is death a release from a lifetime of working and suffering?

3. Is it a gateway a lasting peace in paradise?



Because I could not stop for Death

Because I could not stop for Death-- He kindly stopped for me-- The Carriage held but just Ourselves-- And Immortality. We slowly drove--He knew no haste And I had put away My labor and my leisure too, For His Civility--



We passed the School, where Children strove At Recess--in the Ring-- We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain-- We passed the Setting Sun-- Or rather--He passed us-- The Dews drew quivering and chill-- For only Gossamer, my Gown-- My Tippet--only Tulle--



Or rather--He passed us-- The Dews drew quivering and chill-- For only Gossamer, my Gown-- My Tippet--only Tulle-- We paused before a House that seemed A Swelling of the Ground-- The Roof was scarcely visible-- The Cornice--in the Ground--



Since then--'tis Centuries--and yet Feels shorter than the Day I first surmised the Horses' Heads Were toward Eternity— ----By Emily Dickinson



因为我不能够停下等死

因为我不能够停下等死— 他为我停下友善和气— 四轮马车只载着我俩— 和不死。我们慢慢驱车—他知道不急而我也挥去了我的工作和安逸，缘他彬彬有礼—



我们经过学校，值课间休息孩子们围成圆环—打逗游戏— 我们经过农田凝望五谷我们经过落日— 确切地说—是他经过了我们— 那露水引来了冷颤寒气— 因我的女礼服—仅为纤细的薄纱织物我的披肩—不过是绢网而已



我们暂停于一幢建筑物前它看上去好似一片地面隆起— 那屋顶几乎看不见— 宛如飞檐装饰着大地— 自那以后—若干个世纪— 可还是感觉比那天短，我的一次猜测到那马头是朝向永恒之地—



Main idea of 712

Using personification, Emily Dickinson portrayed Death as a gentleman or as a suitor. The poem is a dramatic representation of the passage or trip from this world of living to the after life.The event is a metaphorical use of an activity---a formal but friendly drive in a carriage in the country of a gentleman and his intended lady.



The gentleman is Death himself. The lady is the imagined person of the poet. She is looking back upon how life had been before she came.



Success is counted sweetest

Success is counted sweetest By those who never succed To comprehend a nectar( 花蜜 ) Repuires sorest need

Not one of all the purple host （部队） Who took the flag today Can tell the definition So clear ,of victory



As he, defeated,dying On whose forbidden ear The distand strains of triumph Break,agonuzed （痛苦的） and clear.



Summary

The speaker says that "those who ne'er succeed" place the highest value on success. (They "count" it "sweetest".) To understand the value of a nectar, the speaker says, one must feel "sorest need." She says that the members of the victorious army ("the purple Host / Who took the flag today") are not able to define victory as well as the defeated, dying man who hears from a distance the music of the victors.



Form

The three stanzas of this poem take the form of iambic trimeter--with the exception of the first two lines of the second stanza, which add a fourth stress at the end of the line. (Virtually all of Dickinson's poems are written in an iambic meter that fluctuates fluidly between three and four stresses.) As in most of Dickinson's poems, the stanzas here rhyme according to an ABCB scheme, so that the second and fourth lines in each stanza constitute the stanza's only rhyme.



Commentary

Many of Emily Dickinson's most famous lyrics take the form of homilies, or short moral sayings, which appear quite simple but that actually describe complicated moral and psychological truths. "Success is counted sweetest" is such a poem; its first two lines express its homiletic point, that "Success is counted sweetest / By those who ne'er succeed" (or, more generally, that people tend to desire things more acutely when they do not have them).

The subsequent lines then develop that axiomatic truth by offering a pair of images that exemplify it: the nectar--a symbol of triumph, luxury, "success"--can best be comprehended by someone who "needs" it; the defeated, dying man understands victory more clearly than the victorious army does.



The poem exhibits Dickinson's keen awareness of the complicated truths of human desire (in a later poem on a similar theme, she wrote that "Hunger--was a way / Of Persons outside Windows-- / The Entering--takes away--"), and it shows the beginnings of her terse, compacted style, whereby complicated meanings are compressed into extremely short phrases (e.g., "On whose forbidden ear").



Study Questions on I felt a funeral in my Brain

1.Whose funeral is the speaker envisioning? 2. What might the last two stanzas be

describing? 3.Compare the images in line 12 with the

images of the funeral presented in lines 1-11, which group of images is clearer? Why?



Her style

1) She was original and idiosyncratic; 2) She is good at catching the charm of something but dropping the thing itself. 3) Her choice of words, her verbal constructions, even her spelling were very unconventional; 4) Her poetry abounds in telling images. 5) Her technique is severe economy of expression.



Comments on her

Emily Dickinson is known as “Amherst Sister”, “New England nun” and a courageous experimentalist.

She died leaving 1775 poems in all. Her death is her beginning as a poet.

Over a century passed, her poetry meets ignorance and misunderstanding and then praise and comprehension.

She, as well as her poetry, attracts more and

more attention.





Questions?

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HISTORY AND ANTHOLOGY OF LITERATURE 美国文学史及选读 American Literature 美国文学史及选读